As the car started Jamie heard the voice of the little Scout saying: “A long time ago, one day when he was blue, the Bee Master told me——” and that was all he heard of the story. What he had seen of it was sufficient for him. He went back to the house laughing and without realizing that Margaret Cameron would expect him to be in mourning. He saw the surprise in her eyes and straightened his face immediately. His Scotch honesty instantly asserted itself.
“Margaret,” he said, “I am not sailing under any false colours with you. There are some things that I don’t want to talk about, because I don’t understand them well enough to make them plain to anybody else. But there is this I am going to tell you. I saw the girl I married only once and very little of her before we were married, and I did not see her afterward until she was at the point of making her crossing. This baby bears my name and has been left to me, and I am going to do the best job I can in rearing him properly, but I am not in mourning for his mother, and you needn’t expect me to exhibit any deep symptoms of grief, because I can’t when I don’t feel them.”
Margaret Cameron stood still, looking at the baby.
“That kind of a tale doesn’t sound like you, Jamie,” she said, “but if I understand the province of a friend at all it consists largely in keeping one’s mouth shut and doing the things that will be of most benefit. Naturally, I would like to know what this baby’s mother looked like and what kind of a girl she was, but I suppose, after all, she looked like the baby since a boy generally resembles
